I LEAVE IT TO YOU - CHAPTER I

The clock ticked seven. The annoying alarm sound from the clock disseminated throughout Hoggar’s room. The ‘alarming’ noise was reverberated by the smooth metal walls of the room. Whoever told him that metal walls reduce reverberation. It helps him in a way too. He was always late in getting up in the morning, late in getting up from the single cot that seemed to be the only decent piece of furniture in his one roomed apartment. The cuckoo from the dirty clock was rocking in and out, shouting its shouts, and it would do it for about five minutes. Normally he would wake up after a minute of the cuckoo’s visit and switch the alarm off but today he didn’t. The plastic cuckoo finished its five minutes work and went back to its place and would not show its face for another hour. Hoggar just laid there, on his bed, under his bed sheet, his head over a pillow, everything like how they always were, except for one single thing, he was shivering, shivering so much that tiny droplets of sweat stood over his forehead like dew drops. His best and only chum, Timothy, was getting killed by a massive truck in a freak road accident.
It took him five minutes to gain consciousness and even realize what was actually happening to him. He didn’t wake up shouting like a petrified woman with her hands covering her mouth, like how they do in the movies. He got up shivering, just plainly shivering, with a look in his face that would have fetched him an Academy Award if he were doing that in a movie. He was wiping the tears, really salty tears, which were flowing from his eyes. He never knew such things could happen in a dream. He dreams every single day but none was like the one he had during that early morning. Maybe no one wished him ‘sweet dreams’ the previous night. But talking about it no one actually wishes him ‘sweet dreams’ on any day.
He got into the shower quickly because he didn’t want to go late to his office, not even a minute late. Water was pouring down like a thunderstorm but Hoggar was just standing there, with no reaction, as if cold water always pours down on him throughout the day. His thoughts were all directed towards Timothy. They were both orphans and were brought up in the Mother’s orphanage. An amazing friendship blossomed between them while they grew up in the orphanage together, a friendship that stayed for life, a friendship that existed even long after they came out of the orphanage. The interesting fact about their camaraderie was that both of them were as contrary as summer and winter. Hoggar was a reticent, opens his mouth more to yawn than to converse. Timothy was his only close friend. Timothy on the other hand was gregarious and candid.
All this nostalgia and history only took away some of his not-to-waste-away-today time as he was already very late. He had his ready-to-eat breakfast in his small kitchen cum dining room. He had to hurry to catch his mundane train, the 800 Central to his office at Central Park. It was a ten minutes walk from his home to the railway station and another ten minutes walk from the Central Park railway station to his office, but just today its not going to be a ten minutes walk, it was going to be a two minutes run. As he was running to the railway station he didn’t know whether he had to think about what all the people looking at him were thinking about this crazy runner or about his early morning nightmare. The nightmare was just a nightmare, not reality, he was convinced. But he was not convinced about the strange looks people were directing towards this ‘awkwardly running man’.
As the day leaved way for the noon, memories of his nightmare also leaved way for good thoughts. He thought of all the good days he had spent with Timothy, all the fun (actually, all of the fun he has ever had) he had with Timothy. As the head clerk of a private office he had a lot of work to do and he was also the kind of a person who would never compromise his work life for his private life (if at all he had one) but today his thoughts were all directed towards Timothy, the ‘Timothy thoughts’ sans the nightmare. By the time he left for lunch he had almost forgotten everything about the nightmare, or at least he forced himself to forget it. He was walking all alone to the nearby restaurant to have his lunch, to relish his economical burger and the small dose of coke. The restaurant was on the other side of the road and he was trying to cross the road, making his way to the other side of the road interrupting the meteoric-like madly moving traffic. A massive truck just missed him by an inch. The wind traveling along with the truck just pushed him away as horns screamed and heads turned. Somehow he made his way to the other side with a head heavy with thoughts and ears heavy with the onlooker’s ‘be careful’s and ’watch out’s.
Glimpses of his nightmare started surfacing back into his head. Had the truck that just missed him not the same one that killed Timothy in the nightmare? Yes, they were of the same make and color. Instead of getting into the restaurant he was just walking, walking wherever his legs took him, not walking wherever his mind took him. He forced himself to stop but couldn’t for about half a minute. Then he did stop, cleared everything from his mind and walked back to his office, carefully, without taking his lunch.
He had his dinner at about ten in the night. He had come home early from his office with an empty stomach. He wanted to sleep but he could not. He wanted to eat but could not. He did not want to think about that day’s incident but couldn’t do anything else other than that. A couple of mild sedatives were taken in between gulps of water. Sleep came to him automatically in about a few minutes.
The ubiquitous silence was broken by the rare ring of Hoggar’s telephone at about midnight. Hoggar woke up thinking it was the alarm, telling to himself ‘man, time sure flies’ and was amazed to find out that it was the telephone and not the alarm. All the sedative had done its work. He was so tired that he didn’t even want to get up to pick up the telephone. He let the telephone ring. It stopped after about 30 seconds. Just when he was drifting back to sleep the telephone started ringing again. He somehow coaxed himself to attend the call, telling himself that it might be important.
He sleepily picked up the phone receiver and identified the voice at the other end as Timothy’s roommate, Steve. Steve told him something in a very disturbed voice, something that made Hoggar go white allover in shock and surprise. He heard the words crystal clear from steve’s mouth, “Hoggar, Hoggar….. Timothy… our Timmy’s killed….killed….by a truck”.